East Germany Kept Nazi Past in Mind

Published: January 22, 1995

To the Editor:

"Germany's Awful Anniversary" (The Week in Review, Jan. 15) is only partly accurate to state that for two decades after World War II: "Germans assiduously ignored much of the truth about the Nazi dictatorship. Schoolchildren were taught little about the horrors their parents witnessed or perpetrated." You note that many bureaucrats and industrialists who had been part of the Nazi machine "were quietly welcomed back into society."

On our visit to the former East Germany in 1985, my wife and I found that this was not the case. Our guides in both Berlin and Rostock informed us that the Government had increased educational measures to reinforce the anti-Fascist legacy.

For instance, in 1983 an East German magazine reported that students were still being taken on trips to concentration camps where many anti-Fascists, Jews, Gypsies and others were tortured to death.

In West Germany, many former Nazis were put into high-level Government jobs. Nearly all East German leaders had been in the resistance, in camps or exile.

East German archives show that 13,000 Nazis and war criminals were tried and given lengthy sentences. In West Germany, only 8,600 war criminals were brought to trial, many of whom received light sentences. According to a former United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials who has been trying to bring Nazi judges to trial, not one has yet been prosecuted, and they draw generous pensions. DAVID SILVER New York, Jan. 15, 1995